For most writers who deal with displacement, rewriting themselves, articulating and communicating their sense of estrangment is their lifetime work. For displacement forces one to leave behind the familiar and embrace the unknown. In this process of deconstruction, the concepts of home, belonging and identity are renegotiated and questioned constantly. Le Grand Voyage – the working title for the draft of a novel that is presented in conjunction with this exegesis – is a fictional work that is produced out of the implications of displacement, which inscribes itself in a series of explorations I started in 2001, cumulating with two video works Frammento in 2003 and Footnotes in 2004. Le Grand Voyage investigates further the concept of home by questioning the home/mother relationship. The exegesis aims to contextualise the making of Le Grand Voyage by using another woman’s narrative as the main point of reference: Linda Olsson’s Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs (2005). Olsson’s work – like mine – is conceived out of the effects of displacement, and the literary form and structure display symptoms that are characteristics to narratives of displacement. By putting the home/mother/daughter in context, the narrative displays home as a patriarchal construct showing how the idealisation of home/place is predicated on a gendering of home, whereby, as McDermott notes, ‘home is constructed as a maternal, static and past, to which the (male) subjects longs to return’ (2003: 265). The narrative’s point of view is that of daughters but also that of mothers as daughters, and enables not only a feminist discussion of the notion of home but also of motherhood. Therefore, the theoretical approach for this work has encompassed feminists’ writings that have particularly focused their research on space, place and gender. In challenging the dominant form of gender constructions and relations, the first and second wave feminism have empowered many women to leave home in order to shape their own version of identity. I believe it is within the perspective of displacement, of being out of place, that many women continue to find the necessary distance to contest a particular reading of woman and home that still prevails in academic literature and fiction. Thus, an important part of this exegesis concentrates on the critic of home. I want to argue in a feminist way that our ideas of home and belonging still reflect gendered assumptions and are therefore contestable. That displacement as a catalyst for loss, emotional grief and mourning becomes an enabling way for women to rethink home in terms of what was at play rather than in place and to do the ‘memory work’ that feminists ask women to do: to remember in order not to forget because ‘forgetting is a major obstacle to change’ (Greene, 1991: 298). Their attacks on the feminisation of place have opened up for me possibilities to think of home outside the parameters of sameness. They have also enabled me to understand the paradoxical position a displaced person is faced with: if displacement is favored and privileged why then do longings for home still persist for some? – a fact that is well illustrated in the actual resurgence of the preoccupation to belong. The gain in displacement also involves the fact that distance forces one to look at the longing and nostalgia for what they really conceal. In the case of a woman and, motherless daughters, distance, as this exegesis demonstrates, enables the writer to unveil the longings as subversive and fraudulent, tricking women into thinking there was nothing better than the past: home sweet home, the safe, bounded nest where women could be women: could be the mother. With the ‘memory work’ they both learn to think away from the parameters of sameness and the past, outside the nostalgic stances of singularity, safety, boundaries and internalised histories, therefore outside of the maternal, the home/mother relationship. ‘What is home?’ is a difficult question to negotiate for a woman. The exegesis and the first draft of the novel show what is at stake when one asks the question and the responsibility of women when writing about home.

For most writers who deal with displacement, rewriting themselves, articulating and communicating their sense of estrangment is their lifetime work. For displacement forces one to leave behind the familiar and embrace the unknown. In this process of deconstruction, the concepts of home, belonging and identity are renegotiated and questioned constantly. Le Grand Voyage – the working title for the draft of a novel that is presented in conjunction with this exegesis – is a fictional work that is produced out of the implications of displacement, which inscribes itself in a series of explorations I started in 2001, cumulating with two video works Frammento in 2003 and Footnotes in 2004. Le Grand Voyage investigates further the concept of home by questioning the home/mother relationship. The exegesis aims to contextualise the making of Le Grand Voyage by using another woman’s narrative as the main point of reference: Linda Olsson’s Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs (2005). Olsson’s work – like mine – is conceived out of the effects of displacement, and the literary form and structure display symptoms that are characteristics to narratives of displacement. By putting the home/mother/daughter in context, the narrative displays home as a patriarchal construct showing how the idealisation of home/place is predicated on a gendering of home, whereby, as McDermott notes, ‘home is constructed as a maternal, static and past, to which the (male) subjects longs to return’ (2003: 265). The narrative’s point of view is that of daughters but also that of mothers as daughters, and enables not only a feminist discussion of the notion of home but also of motherhood. Therefore, the theoretical approach for this work has encompassed feminists’ writings that have particularly focused their research on space, place and gender. In challenging the dominant form of gender constructions and relations, the first and second wave feminism have empowered many women to leave home in order to shape their own version of identity. I believe it is within the perspective of displacement, of being out of place, that many women continue to find the necessary distance to contest a particular reading of woman and home that still prevails in academic literature and fiction. Thus, an important part of this exegesis concentrates on the critic of home. I want to argue in a feminist way that our ideas of home and belonging still reflect gendered assumptions and are therefore contestable. That displacement as a catalyst for loss, emotional grief and mourning becomes an enabling way for women to rethink home in terms of what was at play rather than in place and to do the ‘memory work’ that feminists ask women to do: to remember in order not to forget because ‘forgetting is a major obstacle to change’ (Greene, 1991: 298). Their attacks on the feminisation of place have opened up for me possibilities to think of home outside the parameters of sameness. They have also enabled me to understand the paradoxical position a displaced person is faced with: if displacement is favored and privileged why then do longings for home still persist for some? – a fact that is well illustrated in the actual resurgence of the preoccupation to belong. The gain in displacement also involves the fact that distance forces one to look at the longing and nostalgia for what they really conceal. In the case of a woman and, motherless daughters, distance, as this exegesis demonstrates, enables the writer to unveil the longings as subversive and fraudulent, tricking women into thinking there was nothing better than the past: home sweet home, the safe, bounded nest where women could be women: could be the mother. With the ‘memory work’ they both learn to think away from the parameters of sameness and the past, outside the nostalgic stances of singularity, safety, boundaries and internalised histories, therefore outside of the maternal, the home/mother relationship. ‘What is home?’ is a difficult question to negotiate for a woman. The exegesis and the first draft of the novel show what is at stake when one asks the question and the responsibility of women when writing about home.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Media, Music, and Cultural Studies, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 303-332. / Carnal transcendence and sexual difference -- An amorous exchange -- Angels playing with placentas -- Fluid subjects -- Poetics -- Oneiric spaces -- Conclusion. / Carnal transcendence imagines a world in which the carnal has the weight and value of transcendence, and the divine is as liveable and readily evoked as the carnal. Carnal transcendence offers a means of thinking through difference in the work of Luce Irigaray, who asks: "why and how long ago did God withdraw from carnal love?" (1991a, p 16). This thesis argues that Irigaray enables her readers to explore the relationship between carnality, transcendence and difference, but resists elaborating it in her work. Carnal transcendence as difference risks remaining an exercise in rhetoric, rather than the transformative and creative philosophy that Irigaray imagines. -- Irigaray's resistance to the carnal is evident in her arguments for sexual difference, which offers our "salvation" if we think it through, and heralds "a new age of thought, art, poetry, and language: the creation of a new poetics" (1993a, p 5). Note the language of transcendence used here. When considered in the light of carnal transcendence, sexual difference imagines a differently sexed culture. This thesis argues that Irigaray's writing is contradictory on this point: it articulates the plurality of women's sexuality, but emphatically excludes theories of sex and gender that emphasise multiplicity. This thesis challenges these limitations by exploring the possibilities of the "other" couple in Irigaray's writing-mother and daughter - for thinking through carnal transcendence as difference. -- This thesis not only explicates a theoretical model for carnal transcendence as difference; it also attempts to put into practice a poetics - a playful rewriting of theory. This celebrates the carnality of Irigaray's writing - evident in her complex imagery of the two lips, mucus, the placenta and angels-and enables an exploration of the philosophical space of the "new poetics" that Irigaray is attempting to engender. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / 332 p. ill (some col.)

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Mon poste de psychologue clinicienne au sein d’une maison de retraite m’a sensibilisée à la souffrance psychique des aides-soignantes. A partir de l’écoute des aides-soignantes dans le cadre de ma mission de support technique à l’équipe, émerge la plainte récurrente d’un déficit égotiste de désinvestissement émotionnel et affectif et la non reconnaissance de la pénibilité de leur tâche, qui me conduit à poser l’hypothèse d’un burn out. La recherche porte donc sur le Syndrome d’Épuisement Professionnel. Elle étudie les relations complexes entre le personnel médico-social aides-soignantes et la cadre de santé, et entre la personne âgée et sa fille. Un questionnaire clinique a fait ressortir l’ampleur du ressenti subjectif d’être épuisé. L’échelle standardisée MSP de Louise Lemyre, celle du ressenti subjectif d’être stressé. Le stress étant convoqué dans la position conceptuelle théorique retenue du Syndrome d’Épuisement Professionnel.L’analyse de ces deux ressentis a révélé les rapports complexes entre soignante–soignée et la cadre et entre fille–mère et grand-mère. C’est ainsi que l’enjeu narcissique du personnel fait ressurgir les origines archaïques de la sexualité infantile dans le lien intime au corps. En même temps, à cause d’une féminisation généralisée de la profession, la spécificité de la fonction du Féminin Psychique s’impose.Cette recherche souhaite apporter, grâce à ce Féminin Psychique, un éclairage autre sur la position intermédiaire de la Cadre. Le statut de bonne ou mauvaise mère que les aides-soignantes lui reconnaissent, aggrave ou diminue le Syndrome d’Épuisement Professionnel et le stress. Enfin, cette recherche insiste une nouvelle fois sur la nécessité impérieuse de la formation permanente institutionnelle et du travail d’élaboration psychique de ces personnels et ce, à périodicités constantes. / As a psychologist in an EHPAD (a regulated home for dependent seniors), I became very much aware of the auxiliary nurses’ psychological sufferings. Listening to them during my team-supporting mission, I heard a recurring complaint emerge, that of an egotistical deficit of emotional and affective disinvestment and of a lack of recognition of the painfulness of their task. This has led me to hypothesize professional exhaustion. The research in this thesis therefore focuses on the burn out syndrome. It studies the complex relations between the auxiliary nurses as medico-social staff and the health manager in charge as well as between the elderly person and his/her daughter.A clinical questionnaire highlighted the depth of the subjective feeling of exhaustion while Louise Lemyre’s standardized scale highlighted the depth of the subjective feeling of stress, an operational notion in the theoretical concept of burn out.The analysis of both feelings revealed the complex relations between patient-auxiliary nurse and manager as well as between daughter-mother and grandmother. The narcissism at stake with the staff reactivates the archaic origins if child sexuality in the nursing place. A t the same time, because of the general feminization of the profession, the specificity of the feminine psyche is of foremost importance.Thanks to this notion, the research paper aims to shed a different light on the intermediary position of the manager. The status of good or bad mother figure that auxiliary nurses grant her worsens or lessens the burn out and stress.Last, this research paper further insists on the absolute necessity of permanent institutional training and of psychic elaborative work for the staff at regular intervals.